Giant Steps

When one of the Newhouse/Advance Publications stable of newspapers publishes a story about a New Jersey politician under the headline “Travelin’ Man,” there’s only one thing it really means. A few years back, the Jersey Journal published a story about the peregrinations of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez with precisely that headline. On Thursday, the Star-Ledger‘s frontpagestory was about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Although the piece is ostensibly about the many out-of-state speaking engagements that His Hugeness has scheduled during the past year, the headline actually conveys another message –in coded language that only some of the Star-Ledger’s readers understand. That message, for those of you who didn’t already know, proclaims that Chris Cristie is a freemason operating in the service of the order. Don’t be confused by the fact that Christie is nominally a Roman Catholic and that a papal edict forbids Catholics to join the freemasons: Christie long ago made the expedient choice that has propelled him to where he is today.

Shared membership in the league of three-letter men is the real reason why so many Democrat legislators from South Jersey have been crossing the aisle to vote ‘aye’ on Republican bills in the state assembly and senate. Steve Sweeney, Fred Madden, John Burzichelli and the rest of George Norcross‘ Camden/Gloucester minions are largely sticking to the deal that Norcross cut with the Union County District Council before the 2009 gubernatorial election –sell out Dick Codey and Jon Corzine, vote with the Big Guy, and you can rule New Jersey south of Rancocas Creek as you please. As Christie’s Rutgers-Rowan merger proposal clearly demonstrates, the payoff will be enormous.

In any case, it’s difficult to say how many New Jersey masons didn’t already know that Brother Christie had donned the apron back in his pre-prosecutor, Morris County days. If they’re the intended audience, such a headline would seem superfluous. But maybe the Ledger’s article is the best way to introduce Candidate Christie to a larger electorate –for example, all those folks in the other 49 states who might want to know just a little bit more about Mitt Romney‘s running-mate.